4 - I Am Legend (Will Smith)
This entry could have easily fallen into the catchall for casting new ethnicities in older roles, but there is more to this character that changed against the source that is worth mentioning. Will Smith played Robert Neville, the sole survivor of a global pestilence that created a sub-race of vampires. The book was written in 1954 by Robert Matheson at a time when African Americans were fighting for basic civil liberties. The opportunity for a black protagonist was very slim without politicizing the story in a direction not intended by the author. The character's re-envisioning (after half a dozen writers over a ten year stint in development hell) re-defined thesis of the movie. The crux of the novel was the view of heroism/villainy. Neville was the sole survivor of the human race and he hunted the victorious species in killing sprees during their vulnerable daylight hours. The end of the book reveals that the "vampires" have actually evolved into a sophisticated new society and they view Neville as a primeval terror murdering them in their sleep and he dies he'll become a mythical evil in the new race's collective conscious, i.e. a Legend. Will Smith's portrayal instead focuses on the will to survive in isolation and hopelessness. Any moral complexity between the two competing species is completely abandoned in favor of a easily digestible plot in which Smith finds a cure to save a suddenly not extinct human race. Which would have been the better film? You decide.